Punk Rock - theatre review, Lyric Hammersmith
This new teen drama starring The Boat That Rocked's Tom Sturridge has moments of sharp Inbetweeners-style humour but ends up descending into Dawson's Creek-style cliché
9 September 2009
Rating: 2/5
IT’S clearly teen year at the Lyric, but beautifully served by Spring Awakening in March, we’re back to dull clichés for this new drama by Pornography writer Simon Stephens.
Set in a northern grammar school with an improbably Eton-meets-Hollyoaks student body, a new arrival prompts nerdy sixth former William (The Boat That Rocked’s Tom Sturridge) into his first crush, and then – when rebuffed – to re-examine his life with tragic consequences.
Stephens, to his credit, wanted this play to give teenage actors something that wasn’t patronising. But, dear God, he mostly fails miserably. William goes from alright bloke to Columbine wannabe in the space of a month, while charismatic characters get liberally dipped in teen stereotype – bully, bitch, self-harmer - as if from thin air.
It makes it howlingly frustrating when more natural scenes show how this could have been: Inbetweeners meets Blackadder rather than a shouty Dawson's Creek.
Clocking in at two hours, it’s also way too long for a one-act play with all the tension of old knickers. I nearly cheered when a large white light obscured much of the (excellent) set, in the hope it would be some kind of theatrical memory-wiping device, but instead it led to a tedious and unnecessary epilogue.
Here and there, though, the cast show flashes of brilliance - The Inbetweeners' bully Henry Lloyd-Hughes steals every scene he's in. But Punk Rock needs to decide what it wants to be: strong observational comedy, or angsty mixed-up tripe.
Punk Rock , to 26 September, Lyric Hammersmith, Kings Mall, King Street, Hammersmith, W6 0QL
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